Ivy (Agata)

My grandchildren have often pestered me for stories about my years as an adventurer and with a rather unpleasant realisation I have discovered that old age robbed me of my detailed memory. So, while I still remember some of my best adventures I decided to write them down so that they may be remembered throughout the ages. Honestly, one adventure I'm proudest of and I think it's probably the most worth remembering. Indeed, the story I'm about to write down is quite otherworldly. Long, long ago, when I was young and spry, Coravane was in the midst of a messy war with Old Syenon. Old Syenon was being rather horrible which turned a number of usually neutral but powerful entities against it. These included the Fey. You see, Old Syenon was going around and both killing and collecting Fey. The Fey were furious and needed help, so we took advantage of their vulnerability, and offered our humble services. After some discussion, and a number of compromises, we drew up an agreement, though I shall not bore you with the exact terms. I shall only tell you the part that matters, namely, we got offered the opportunity of a lifetime: a chance to see the world of the Vraak. So, being the adventurers that we were, we found ourselves standing with a certain high Fey about to go through a portal to another world. The fey told us that in order to open the portal we had to say “we want to go to the world of white Vraak’shai” but only for true conviction would the portal open. It took a couple of tries but it eventually opened. (I must say it was quite funny to follow the instructions of the fey, and indeed watching our weather mage forced to skip and twirl "with conviction" was quite the amusing sight.) Anyways, we went through the portal and ended up in this bare landscape. It was rather depressing, a silent sandy landscape with these huge pointy rocks. In front of us was a lake, filled with very bright white light, to the right was a canyon-like landscape which we guessed was filled with water. Behind us there was grass perhaps? Close to our landing spot we saw some rocks that looked like they wanted to be grass, but weren't, so maybe it was just more of that. Honestly we could not see clearly enough to judge. We headed towards the lake and encountered these hyena-like creatures though they were much more ferocious. However, we slayed them pretty easily and moved on. We got closer to the lake and at some point the light was so bright we became blinded by it. A strong wind picked up and it knocked us around a bit, but we passed it with relative ease. We then met our first native Vraak’shai people. They were clad in pure white and resembled humanoids. However they were very pale with elaborate markings down their cheeks. It looked like they had piercings in their foreheads but on closer scrutiny the piercings turned out to be rocks. As soon as they saw us they charged, but we started yelling at them to stop. We shouted things like " Stop! We want to help!” and “ we will do you no harm”, but of course the Vraak didn't speak our language and we didn't speak theirs. For a while we were forced to play a hopeless game of charades and self defence before one of our party thought of dropping his weapons. We all quickly followed his example and soon all our weapons and spells were lying on the sandy ground. Looking back, I can't say that, that was a very wise decision on our side (defenseless we could easily have ended up being someone's dinner and died for good,) but luckily we didn't get eaten or killed. The Vraak people quickly calmed down, and they started expressing their interest in us. Curious Vraak are hilarious and I must say the less serious party members were barely containing their laughter. What made me crack up every time was their hilarious language. They speak in a language made of choking like noises and their excited pointing and clucking drew a smile from everyone. Anyway, the Vraak didn't like my brother's spells, for he is both necromancer and wild mage but soon came to terms with them. They reminded me of small children exposed to some new trivial seeming novelty every other minute. All our weapons were touched and examined. They found our passive magic weapons and seemed quite worried about them. This added up to our previous knowledge that passive magic was a very effective weapon against them. Aaaand then they found our weather mage’s spells. Now that was probably my favorite moment in my whole adventuring career. They jumped back with startled exclamations and started blabbering away in their language looking kind of dazed. When they finally calmed down they seemed to decide that they could trust us. Then began the long mimicking game. We had to communicate using only drawings and hand gestures but at some point we got our point across using my brother's necromantic spells to represent the Vraak that were in our world. So we were taken to the Vraak'shai (also known as the high Vraak). These thankfully spoke our language (though somewhat rockily) so charades was out the window. Here is what we now know about the Vraak people. There are five factions of the Vraak, each associated with the standard mage classes: Healer, Pyromancer, Necromancer, Diviner and Wild mage. Each faction is at constant war with everyone else. They take no damage other than magic, and passive magic is especially powerful against them so they are willing to do quite a bit for it. Anything that can be used against a very powerful, magical creature is valuable to them, and the promise to help demolish another faction of the Vraak is tempting for them. I shall pause my story there, for I wouldn't wish to bore you with the rest of the logistics and my hands are all stained with ink. But truthfully the fun part of the story is over. My apologies to that one town guard we dragged into another world. -Ivy of Coradel, Coravane